Boot Camps in Halethorpe, Maryland Can Help Troubled Teens, if They Are Like Gateway Boys Academy

Are you searching for boot camps in or around Halethorpe, Maryland to deal with a defiant teen? Learn how boot camps can help troubled teens and learn about how Gateway’s program may prove even more successful for your teen.

If your teen exhibits deliberate disregard for authority, unceasingly displays rebellious behavior, gets into regular and escalating trouble with the law, and lacks cooperation in school, perhaps a boot camp can help improve your troubled teen. 

Boot Camps in Halethorpe, Maryland Can Help At-Risk Boys Learn to Respect Authority

Popular opinion gives military academies, especially boot camps, a reputation for making errant teens into respectable young citizens. In truth, in several positive ways, boot camps can help troubled teens. Boot camps provide an intensive focus on discipline, personal integrity and regard for authority. Programs like these can send a powerful message to a teen who is moving toward a life of crime. For those teens who respond well to it, boot camps can give them a new understanding of the consequences of their actions. For some individuals, boot camps can initially help them move from self-defeating habits, to more respectable behavior. But those bad attitudes often return.

Boot Camps Can Help Troubled Adolescents Change their Behavior, But Many Teen Issues Go Beyond the Behavior

Despite the fact that boot camps can help troubled teens in some situations, most adolescent issues are much more complex than they seem on the surface and are often only symptoms of other issues. Boot camps focus entirely on forcing compliance; they do not provide the therapy to help teens address the true root issues. For teens showing anxiety, depression, drug use, low self-esteem, emotional disorders, and in fact most instances of rebellious behavior, the strict discipline of the boot camp environment may prove counterproductive instead, if it isn’t set up in a way that the discipline is coupled with Christian love and support.

Most boot camps in Halethorpe, Maryland on their own will not speak to family concerns but simply return a somewhat more obedient teen to the same home environment in which he was struggling. Boys who attend boot camps are more likely to return to old habits.  In fact, boot camps in Halethorpe, Maryland are a short-term solution at best, and may be harmful to the teen at worst. Sadly, teens often revert to past behavior after returning home from short-term boot camps, because the length of the program doesn’t instill the attitude changes as a habit in their life.

Gateway’s Boot Camp-Like Program, Plus It’s Ongoing Behavioral Support are Designed to Turn Around Troubled Boys

If you find that a traditional short-term boot camp is not the best choice for your teen, but you still like the idea of what a boot camp teaches, Gateway an alternative that combines the benefits of the military style with the therapeutic input of a therapeutic boarding school. Gateway, in the Panhandle of Florida, is a Christian program that has served – and brought restoration to- struggling teenage boys and their families from homes all across the nation for more than 20 years. Struggling teenage boys from Halethorpe, Maryland and other cities receive an accredited education, counseling and teaching, an introduction to military drill and history, and the discipline for which boot camps are renowned. Gateway offers a  compassionate staff that cares deeply about each teen. Gateway is a military-style school that includes a number of important components that are typically missing from boot camps. Those include: 

• Caring staff and mentors who provide positive role models and concerned involvement, not simply breaking teens down.
• Biblical teaching and spiritual focus, to help teens find the true source of lasting heart change.
• Counseling, to help teens address issues and replace destructive patterns with healthy new choices.
• Family restoration through Biblical instruction and seminars for parents and families.

Boot camps can help troubled teens if they are coupled with a longer term mentoring program like what Gateway offers. We invite you to look beyond Halethorpe, Maryland, for what may be the best situation your boy…a program with a boot camp element, but also ongoing instruction and mentoring for a longer period of  time.

Gateway is Located in the Panhandle of Florida. Boys Come to Gateway from Around the Country. Call Us!